Connectionists: Biologically Inspired Information Fusion: Workshop Report

[M.Casey@surrey.ac.uk]

The final report for the Workshop on Biologically Inspired Information
Fusion is now available at:

http://www.cs.surrey.ac.uk/people/academic/M.Casey/biif2006.html

The workshop was held to bring together both life and physical
scientists, focused on discussing information fusion.  The aim was to
promote collaboration between the disciplines to develop an
understanding of how to build adaptive information fusion systems. This
initial workshop was targeted at bringing the disciplines together to
develop a set of research priorities for future collaboration. This was
achieved through a two-day programme of tutorials, discussion sessions,
student presentations and brainstorming held on the 22nd and 23rd August
2006.  The report summarises the overall organisation, participation,
evaluation and outcomes of the workshop.

In particular, the report highlights the top three research priorities
that were defined during the workshop brainstorming sessions:

1. Sensory fusion, disorder and clinical application
How does sensory fusion impact on disorder and how can this be applied?
In particular, can we develop machine aids in the form of implants or
prosthetics to overcome or reduce the effects of disorders?  For
example, hearing impaired people perform sub-optimally at using visual
cues to amplify auditory cues.  Could a training regime be developed to
enhance the operation of multi-sensory integration to overcome the
sub-optimal performance on visual cues?

2. Exploiting effective biological processes for sensory integration
What biological processes can be exploited by computer systems?  What do
biological sensory systems do well, and conversely what do computer
sensory systems do well?  Which biological sensory systems are optimal?
Is fusion of benefit or not?  Which senses dominate under which
circumstances?  How does memory impact on sensory integration?

3. Developing a common language for inter-disciplinary communication and
collaboration
In order to develop collaboration further, a common language is required
to overcome terminology differences and to assist in cross-discipline
training and dissemination.

Follow-up activities are already planned to help build upon these
identified priorities.  In the first instance these are:

1. Dissemination of the workshop findings and notes.

2. Journal special issue to provide further training and dissemination,
and to promote collaboration.  Currently a call for papers for a special
issue of the Information Fusion journal is being drafted for publication
in 2007.

3. Establishment of follow-up projects.

Further details, proceedings and notes are available at the website.

If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to get in
touch.

Thanks,

Matthew Casey
Department of Computing
School of Electronics and Physical Sciences
University of Surrey
Guildford
Surrey
GU2 7XH
Tel:            +44 (0)1483 689635
E-mail:        m.casey at surrey.ac.uk